“Read a farmer’s hand: the map is in the fingers, not the palm. Loam, paint, tractor grease rubbed into the grooves shade a topography of work….” Farm Hands
In 1931, one in three Canadians lived on a farm. By 2021, more than eight out of ten lived in cities. Susan Haldane and her family have farmed 120 acres in one of the pockets of agricultural land that dot the rocky landscapes of Ontario’s Shield country since 1996. One hundred and fifty years after it was first lumbered and then settled, Chisholm Township remains a rural agricultural community. For the people who farm there, it is a life that, year by year, demands an active commitment to the land, the plants, the animals and the rural community itself. Hard Bargain Road is a book of skillfully crafted, richly textured poems about contemporary rural life from the point of view of one woman who knows and lives that life intimately, inside and out:
“…..Every day
we stub our toes on Creation.” Picking Stones
The poet brings to her work a clear voice, an observant eye and a deep and unsentimental affection for the life that she lives:
“What passes for leisure in Chisholm Township you can find
at the Country Market and Feed store on a Saturday morning….
the farmers can prop an elbow on the wide wooden counter
and toe the floor with felt-lined rubber boots. The finish
on the pine boards is long gone….
…Its’ not the 1950s,
but it could be, or any decade
before or since.” Farmers, Saturday Morning
She does not shirk the challenges of rural life and rural communities. Mental health support in areas where agencies, formal resources and services are few finds a voice in Song for Leonard:
“We will laugh behind his back or to his face,
but when he needs us we’ll come
with rides, snow-clearing, casseroles; community’s
rounds of damage and undoing. Leonard,
here’s the frayed and beautiful mercy in this world.
Leonard, here’s your coffee; here’s your chair. Sit.
Tell us your visions.”
The loved and cherished, unloved and disregarded are all noticed in this collection. There are poems for more than one invasive plant species, as in Pasture Species: Creeping Bedstraw; poems for unpopular birds—
“….This once, let’s just/ look: unloved starlings in murmuration/ star the sky, a fleeting constellation.” (Starling Ballet);
poems for harsh weather, as in Benediction: February—
“Go out without hope./ May the hose not freeze when/ you pull it from the pumphouse;…”
Fencing makes more that one appearance and, in Five Star Electric Blues, finds a voice—
“If the five-strand high-tensile electric
fence could choose, it would be the longest
guitar in the world…..and
it would be the saddest song
the wind ever heard.”
There are poems in this collection for a bull on its way to the stockyards, for the stockyards themselves, for new-born lambs that survive and those that do not, for Ada—
“Boss cow. Does it surprise you
to hear a farmer speak of love?
But of course it’s love that digs
by hand a hole big enough for
a grand piano in the sandhill
behind the barn; love that bears
the old girl there and shovels
the earth back in….
….If it surprises you to hear
a farmer speak of love, then
you’ve had the wrong meaning all along.”
Love for the repetitive, difficult, daily and seasonal work of farming is a core theme of this collection:
“long lean boys make hay, dark forearms
pincushioned, tossing forty-pound bales
up like babies…..
Surely we’ll be here forever; waiting on the land
while the sun shines.” Making Hay
Rural residents will find in Hard Bargain Road an immediate, clear-eyed and familiar light turned upon a life that is seldom portrayed with such skill and compassion in the world of contemporary poetry. For those of us who live in more urban areas, this collection opens a window onto a way of life that is vital to the wellbeing of us all:
“Dust falls on us too, for we
are part of all this, as we fold
back the quilt and settle into bed.” Still Life with Road Dust.
Susan Haldane lives on a farm near the northern boundary of Ontario’s Algonquin Park. Her writing has appeared in a number of Canadian journals and anthologies and was included in Best Canadian Poetry 2020. Her chapbook Picking Stones was published by Gaspereau Press in 2018.
- Publisher : Gaspereau Press (Dec 20 2021)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1554472326
- ISBN-13 : 978-1554472321
